SyFy - The Expanse (Season 1) (1 Viewer)

I saw the trailer for this a day or so ago and it has a big budget feel to it.

Anybody know anything about this upcoming show? Is this going to be

a mini series or go a couple of seasons? I'll admit the trailer really

peaked my interest. And the fact that it's written by the writers of

Children Of Men and Iron Man certainly doesn't hurt.

It's being adapted from a series of novels by James S. A. Corey (a pseudonym adopted by a two-writer team). The first book in the series, Leviathan Wakes, was nominated for a Hugo. The second book in the series, Caliban's War, currently have a 4-1/2 out of 5 star rating from Amazon's customers. So if nothing else, it at least appears to have strong source material.

And Thomas Jane, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Chad Coleman and Jared Harris are all usually pretty reliable actors.

I do think it's a stretch for Syfy to promote this as written by the writers of Children of Men and Iron Man, though. While Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby were indeed among the credited screenwriters for both films, their work consisted of preliminary drafts that were heavily revised, rewritten and reworked after they departed the films. In the case of Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón is on recrod as saying: "You see, as far as I am concerned, those other guys have nothing to do with my movie ... it's just studio development work that I'm not even interested in discussing, because I don't know what they did, and I couldn't care less." In the case of Iron Man, my understanding is that Fergus & Ostby were one of two competing teams writing the screenplay for the film. Jon Favreau cherrypicked the bits he liked best from both screenplays, and then had John August combine them and polish them into the shooting screenplay, which was in turn heavily ad-libbed on set.

That being said, the showrunner Naren Shankar has a lot of experience writing on well-regarded genre television shows.

The books are really quite good--my favourite sci-fi reads of the last decade or so. I've been looking forward to the television adaptation ever since the rumours started flowing a few years back.


For those interested in the books, as Adam notes above, they are written by two authors under a pen name. The two have strong ties to George R.R. Martin:Ty Franck is Martin's assistant, and Daniel Abraham collaborates with Martin and handled the comic adaptation of A Game of Thrones. Of course, each author is talented in their own right (Abraham in particular), so the books a good read even without the Martin tie.


The books share the rotating POV with Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series; each chapter is told from the POV of one of a handful of characters, and each book has a slightly different "set" of characters. Plot-wise--and without any spoilers--the books are a blend of standard space opera, political intrigue, and film noir-like mystery.

Zero g sex scene. That will get people talking.

May as well pick up this thread for discussion of the show, as the first episode was released by SyFy recently. I finally had a chance to watch it tonight.


My initial thoughts and understandings:

* It's a ten episode season that's based (more or less) on the first novel in the series. I'm told that there are bits slipped into the storyline from some of the short stories and later novels, likely to set up subplots and such that will play out over the course of the season/series.

* There are (thus far) four "settings" and viewpoints: Ceres station, Cantebury (ship), Mars, and Earth (New York/UN).

* The settings, scenary, and such are absolutely amazing. Very gritty, very "realistic" feeling.

* The "Belter" patois is a bit hard to understand, and it might be better if there were subtitles for those segments (I didn't understand a word of what they were saying).

* What an amazing cliffhanger at the end of the episode. Wow, waiting for December 15th is going to be tough.

* I want to read the books now.

It's on the TiVo OnePass. The promo looked amazing.

2016 should be a good year for scifi.

Wow. The first two episodes of this were way better than I anticipated.

The trailer didn't pull me in, but I like how the name of the ship is the Rocinante. Rush fans will get that reference.

Scott Hanson said:

The trailer didn't pull me in, but I like how the name of the ship is the Rocinante. Rush fans will get that reference.

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I would be thinking more like Don Quixote fans.

Steve Berger said:

I would be thinking more like Don Quixote fans.

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Possibly, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't an homage to the Rush song, given it is a spaceship in the song.

Scott Hanson said:

Possibly, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't an homage to the Rush song, given it is a spaceship in the song.

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It's the horse for sure (source: books).

For what it's worth, the wikia says the following:

Although Holden states in Leviathan Wakes that he named the Rocinante after Don Quixote's horse from the novel Don Quixote, the name is likely also a reference to the song "Cygnus X-1" by Rush, a band Ty Franck is a big fan of[1], because of the following lyrics:

Flew into the light of Deneb
Sailed across the Milky Way
On my ship, the "Rocinante"
Wheeling through the galaxies

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http://expanse.wikia.com/wiki/Rocinante

After watching the first two episodes my impression is meh. Yes the visual effects are outstanding. The cast is impressive and yet I find myself thus far not giving a rats ass about any of them. Going to give episode 3 a shot and if I feel the same I'm out.

todd s said:

Zero g sex scene. That will get people talking.

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I thought that was unneeded. For the most part, there was a lot of stuff in the first episode that was supposed to shock the viewer that seemed a bit over the top - the zero g sex scene, amputations, torture, etc. On its own I was unimpressed. The second episode was better and I'm intrigued enough to request the next two On Demand to watch later.

It was a little tough to get through the first ep as it's pretty complicated to understand all the various factions, combined with some characters who may not be what they seem and may be infiltrators. I stuck with it and watched eps 3 and 4 and wow, the action picked up and a new faction appears to have entered the fray. I really like this series a lot so far.

I guess we should stick to the regular rules defining spoilers as whatever hasn't aired yet? It's a little difficult with the first 4 now being available on demand but I'll respect whatever the people in the thread want.

Charlie Campisi said:

It was a little tough to get through the first ep as it's pretty complicated to understand all the various factions, combined with some characters who may not be what they seem and may be infiltrators. I stuck with it and watched eps 3 and 4 and wow, the action picked up and a new faction appears to have entered the fray. I really like this series a lot so far.

I guess we should stick to the regular rules defining spoilers as whatever hasn't aired yet? It's a little difficult with the first 4 now being available on demand but I'll respect whatever the people in the thread want.

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I assume we're using the same rules that govern A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones:

• discussion of the episodes only after they have aired on the east coast in the United States (in the event episode air earlier in Canada, for example);
• discussion of upcoming episodes and previews in spoilers; and
• discussion of unaired events in books always in spoilers, with the lead-in to the spoiler indicating the book.

They've now aired all 4 episodes that were available on demand.


It seems that there is a major shock for the viewer in each episode.


In episode 3 is was the detective's partner seemingly getting killed right at the end at the bad part of town. In episode 4 it appears he's "not dead yet", but I still don't give him long.


In episode 4 it is Shed getting killed. Given that the actor is one of the main characters of Royal Pains, I figured he might not be long for the series, but the way it happened seemed designed to shock.


Of course there has been a lot of death so far in the series period, but I wish they wouldn't be going out of their way to shock.


Still, there is a definite mystery and I am intrigued to see how it develops.


One thing that I don't understand about the rioting in Episode 3 (Remember the Cant) - why are they blaming the Earthers, when at that time it seemed to be Mars that was to blame. Or do the Belters just paint them both with the same brush?

The Expanse has wholly captured me. The first hour is the most information-dense show I've watched in a while. I did something I never do: I watched it a second time to get comfortable with the language, world, and concepts before watching the second hour.

It is not the most emotionally engaging show, but even if I don't always feel for the individual characters, I feel the stakes. What happens to these people matters.

Where I'm struggling, four episodes in, is that I still don't know anyone's name.

If the season can keep ratcheting up the drama as it's done so far, it's going to be a great story.

Without any spoilers, suffice it to say that the story in The Expanse (the books) gets so big and different than it first appears; I hope everyone sticks around.

I watched those first 4 eps so quickly and really got into them. Made it tough to follow along with a discussion thread sort of like House of Lies or a Netflix release. Glad I'm not the only one watching. Ep 4 was an action film.